Here's Your Doll, Little Girl
by Ihsan997
Summary: A human who thinks he's an orc finds a little Tauren girl in Highmountain who's toy was stolen by the Feltotem. And come hell or high water, he'll cut a swathe of destruction until he can get it back. 4 chapters.
1. Promisemaking

"Worthless."

Gutripper huffed at the bottom of the mountain ravine as he inspected the corpse of his former quest partner crumpled at his feet. The gnoll wind rider and its wyvern mount had been assigned to him by a local neutral mercenary contractor at the base of Thunder Totem, most definitely against Gutripper's will. The Horde grunt had been in a rather foul mood as it was; a noob who'd exploited nepotism to be assigned a more experienced party leader was the last thing he needed.

Especially one who insisted on trying to ride a wyvern throughout their questing. There was a _reason_ why flying mounts were illegal in the Broken Isles without exceedingly rare permission from Orgrimmar.

The boulder that had knocked the noob out of the sky was probably tossed by an ettin who immediately forgot about the act anyway. Gutripper was tempted to write it off as a waste of personnel, but considering the man's lack of skill it really was a minor loss. Looking away from the gnoll, he tried to find the path they'd been winding along a cliff face in Highmountain; they'd been sent on a regular patrol mission to a flatter, safer valley nearby, and now that he was by himself the soldier could probably cover much more ground much more quickly.

As Gutripper walked a little bit further against the cliff face, he paused and ducked low. Had his trusty dire wolf been present with him, he might have noticed the disturbance earlier, though his own senses were almost as keen. Over the wind, he could hear the sound of somebody weeping.

Keeping his weapons sheathed but his hands ready, he marched until the path against the cliff face led him to the flat upper reaches of central Highmountain, the beauty of which was nearly unmatched. The sound of crying was joined by another voice, pleasing in its tone and as melodic as the wind that had died down. Placing value in the concept of honor that his clan had instilled in him, he stopped crouching and made his presence known as two furry figures came into view around a bend in the mountainous environs.

"Ma'am, are you alright?" Gutripper said to what appeared to be local Highmountain tauren, one small and cute and the other mature and elegant.

When the older tauren turned to receive him, he could tell by the color of her fur that she was a relative of the smaller one - her child perhaps, or maybe a niece. The two of them had paused by what appeared to be camping gear beneath a tree, and the tauren girl was wiping her teary eyes. Not more than six or seven summers of age, the girl had big brown eyes that elicited sympathy even in the battle-hardened heart of the former Champion of the Argent Tournament. She appeared lest disturbed than her companion, who'd been crouching but moved in front of the girl defensively.

The tauren woman looked up at him with more mature but similarly deep, pretty eyes. Her face was young but bore the markings of a woman who worked for a living; if she was the girl's mother, Gutripper had the feeling she was a fine one, and the woman appeared reluctant to answer.

"Yes...well, no. We're not hurt," the woman replied cautiously, slipping over the words in Orcish - the Highmountain tauren had only recently come into contact with the outside world. "Are you...are you with those called the Horde?"

Realizing that the two bovine travelers were probably more in need of help than the woman let on, he held his fist over his heart in a display of sincerity. "I'm Lieutenant Gutripper of the Frostwolf Clan, officer in the Horde military, at your service."

The woman now looked more confused than cautious. Inspecting him up and down - and appearing shy for a moment when he caught her admiring his quads - she cleared her throat as if she was about to say something awkward. "But you're a human!" she exclaimed.

Smiling at the confusion over his roots, he tried to cut down on the usual explanation of his identity. "No; I am Horde," he replied, "raised from the cradle by the only clan of free orcs in Lordaeron after the Second War. And I'm honored to assist all who are in need. What seems to be the problem?"

Sniffling before her relative could answer, the little girl displayed the naïveté of a child who didn't deserve to be in such distress. "The Feltotem tribe stole my doll and the paladin wouldn't help us," she sobbed. The older tauren glanced around nervously at the mention of a paladin.

"Who wouldn't help you?" Gutripper asked.

The woman hugged the child close. "Feltotem ruffians stole my neice's doll when we had no cash. A paladin came by - a human like you, but he didn't speak your language. So he wouldn't help."

"Alliance," Gutripper murmured acrimoniously. When the tauren auntie didn't appear to understand, he waved the topic away. "Ma'am, I will get your niece's doll back."

Big doe eyes glistened up at him, this time the aunt's. "Oh, I don't want to trouble you-"

"It's not trouble; it's my duty, ma'am. Now, which way did these Feltotem ruffians flee?"

"Well...well, thank you so much, mister. They went north, in the same direction as...well, you can still see the paladin riding away over the hill." The auntie pointed to an offensively glistening suit of armor on an irritatingly blonde horse not too far away. "And, well, maybe you can ask him which way they went."

Gutripper thumped his fist on his chest one more time, garnering a laugh from the child. "I'll cut a swathe of destruction until I can dismember the people who stole this little girl's doll," he said just as he turned and sprinted after the unhelpful paladin.

"Well, well, thanks - Earthmother, you're fast!" the tauren woman called after him just after he ran beyond earshot.

Not even working up a sweat, Gutripper exited the flatter clifftops and reached another sharp drop into the valleys below. He noticed hooves from both tauren and a horse, the fel taint on the prints of the former enraging him. Before long, he'd already caught up to the paladin, trotting along on his horse as if the Burning Legion wasn't out ruining thenworld by stealing dolls from little girls.

Also of human racial stock, the Alliance member turned to watch Gutripper as he approached. The uptight looking paladin appeared entirely uninterested in the fact that two civilians were in need, and his eyebrows furrowed angrily when he saw Gutripper's Horde tabard.

"Veryily, thou hast indeed whomsoever thy whenst amongst perspicacity," said the paladin in Common, or at least Gutripper assumed that's what the man said. He had no desire to learn the language of such a two faced nation anyway.

"Need this," Gutripper said as he grabbed the reins of the paladin's horse and casually dropped an elbow onto the side of the other human's head.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!" the paladin screamed as he was knocked from his horse and plummeted to his death off the edge of the cliff. Though he was heavily armored, Gutripper was twice the man's size and gave quite a shock to the Alliance horse when he mounted up.

"Move, unnecessarily pampered riding beast!" Gutripper yelled as he kicked his heels into the horse's side. The animal whinnied and started to run more out of fear than anything else. "We have a doll to rescue!"


	2. Gutripping

Gutripper pressed on, spurring the paladin's horse to the limit of its stamina. Despite its protesting whinnies, it quickly passed the more perilous areas near the edge of Highmountain's jagged cliffs and entered a lightly wooded area. The fel-tainted hoof prints he'd been tracking spread out randomly as if the Feltotem ruffians had quarreled amongst themselves. Or if they'd also been attacked.

He hoped they hadn't been; he'd been itching for a fight ever since he'd been paired with the noob gnoll from the mercenary camp.

"Halt, stupid!" he whispered harshly to the blonde horse after he'd tried to slow its approach for the fourth time.

The thicket of trees was sparsely wooded enough such that he could make out several furry bodies in what appeared to be the aftermath of a skirmish. Two bodies laid on the ground, the fel green glow gone from their eyes and horns. Fel tainted blood was strewn all over the grass and fallen leaves, and a few of the surrounding trees were cracked or otherwise damaged. The survivors - three armed but haggard looking tribesmen - still bore the green glow of the tauren tribe which had succumbed to the Burning Legion's corruption. They spoke quickly, frantically and appeared rather disturbed when they heard the blonde horse's approach in between the trees.

One of them, a bigger fellow visibly unhurt but shaken, began croaking his neck around in order to get a better look at the stranger who approached. "Is that a human?" the tubby individual asked his companions in Taurahe, though Gutripper was a bit rusty in the language and hadn't fully understood the sentence until he'd already stood up in the horse's saddle.

The blonde horse screamed under the weight of the relatively huge human, buckling when Gutripper leapt through the trees and over toward the three Feltotem survivors. He had no idea who'd attacked them or why they'd stolen a doll from a little girl, but as tree branches and sparrows whizzed by Gutripper's ears, he grit his teeth and reminded himself that it didn't matter. They were not only petty thugs but also demon worshippers, and he'd enjoy the opportunity to carve up some Legion meat.

The three tauren scrambled, not entirely caught off guard but visibly shocked by how far the human had jumped toward them. Two of them fell back, fumbling for their weapons with tired, shaking hands. Just as Gutripper came to land, he unsheathed a sword in one hand and an axe in the other, bringing the weapons down on the tubby fellow and a crossbowman with the full force of his collision behind the blades.

His sword came down halfway on the tubby tauren's snout, effectively cutting half of the bovine man's face off. A cross section of the man's skull fell to the ground, displaying a perfectly fine cut down the middle of his frontal lobe, lower jaw and tongue. His axe came down onto the sizable trapezius of the Feltotem crossbowman, sinking into the meat until it contacted the clavicle and shoulder blade and bringing the demonic tauren to his knees with a deep-voiced scream. When Gutripper heard the crossbow clatter on the ground, he knew he had a few moments to take out the last tribesman before any of them had a chance to strike back.

The third tauren lifted a crude mace and shouted something in Taurahe, but his enunciation was poor and Gutripper couldn't understand what exactly the furry man said; all he understood was that the large opponent could probably swing the blunt weapon pretty hard and needed to be out down.

"For the Horde!" Gutripper bellowed as he crossed his arms in front of him, slicing into each the macewielder's elbows opposite his.

A second scream rang out as the two blades contacted bone again. While the macewielder's arms weren't severed, the cuts were deep enough that his arms dropped uselessly, spurring blood and hanging by threads of flesh. The mace thumped on the ground and echoed into the thicket, though the sound was drowned out when Gutripper planted his war axe right between the former macewielder's eyes.

Without even looking behind him prior, Gutripper left the axe sitting in the second Feltotem's head and spun in a half circle, slashing into the air behind him. His instinct's had been accurate; the crossbowman had tried to pick his weapon back up in one hand while clutching his mangled shoulder with the other. Though the swing of his sword was wild, Gutripper had been close enough such that his sword brushed the side of the crossbow and knocked the Feltotem's hand wildly to the side. Unable to properly re-aim in time, the crossbowman only backed up ineffectively as Gutripper gripped his sword tightly and severed the man's good hand. The crossbowman hissed through his teeth, falling backward at the same time as the macewielder behind them, who'd stood for a moment with an axe embedded in his head before he finally fell like a logged Ashenvale purplewood.

Gutripper pounced, holding his sword against the crossbowman's neck. "Where's the doll?" he growled in not-so-fluent Taurahe while tanking on one of the man's horns.

"I don't know what you mean! I don't know!" the man replied while trying to stop the bleeding of his stumped wrist in futility.

Gutripper kept the sword against the Feltotem's neck while dragging the man in a circle in the leaves. "You stole a doll from a little Highmountain girl! Where is it!"

"I don't know anything about a doll, we just took their travel pack!"

"Give it!"

"I don't have it, we were ambushed by a drogbar hunting party and they took all our stuff!"

Dragging his sword across the demon bull's jugular vein, Gutripper quickly grabbed his axe from the head of the second corpse and crouched low again. He could smell ozone, dry soil and iron ore and realized that the drogbar party who'd apparently ambushed the Feltotem weren't far. Beneath a low hanging branch, he found the beginning of the wide tracks of flat drogbar feet. The paladin's horse had already fled, and Gutripper fell into his own gallop as he exited the thicket and found himself emerging from the wood and the nearby hills.

On what was one of the few open plain's in all of Highmountain, visibility was high and he found that he could see straight to the ridges marking the very end of northeastern Highmountain. Although the drogbar themselves weren't visible, their tracks remained and led him toward the foothills at the very end of the valley. If he'd found the child and her auntie only moments after they'd been robbed, and he'd started to pursue the Feltotem mere minutes before they'd been ambushed by the drogbar, then there was still time. He sheathed his weapons and broke out into yet another sprint, racing toward the grassy foothills steadily rising into the very beginning of the northeastern mountains.

After only a few minutes, he could hear the shouts of the drogbar as well as another type of person. Although the area was only sparsely wooded, the terrain was uneven enough such that he had to continue running until a single bead of sweat finally dripped down his forehead before he could see the arguing earth movers.

Two drogbar appeared to be upset at each other, pointing their fingers at each other and jumping up and down. Gutripper wondered how only two of them had gotten the upper hand over five tauren, but that wasn't really his business. He was on a quest, and by the spirits of his ancestors he'd complete it that afternoon.

Not even bothering with a battlecry, he charged toward the two earthy beings, tossing stealth to the side. Both of them turned as he ran toward them, seemingly confused but also defensive and mildly hostile. "You have a doll you stole from the Feltotem," Gutripper shouted in Taurahe, guessing that the drogbar would know the language from contact with their enemies, "and you'll hand it over now!"

Understanding him but also ignoring him, the two earth movers spread out. "These are drogbar stones!" one of them shouted right back even though it made no sense in context.

The two of them continued to spread out until they were on either side of him, slapping the ground and thumping their chests in a threatening display. In no mood for negotiation or reason, Gutripper howled so loud that both of the drogbar paused. Squatting and tossing his elbows back, he put on his proverbial death face as he started to perform a war dance he'd learned from other members of the Frostwolf clan. Stomping and striking the air in front of him, his dance both startled and agitated the two drogbar, throwing them off guard as they also yelled at each other in what appeared to be an attempt to formulate a rough strategy. When Gutripper jumped and howled at them again, they both jumped back in fright and charged without thinking.

The ground shook as the two of them dropped onto their knuckles and ran on all fours. Pebbles bounced up into the air and dust was kicked up from the grass, causing every green blade to tremble as the two topheavy titans burst forward with the intent of crushing Gutripper in between them. Their initial fright disappeared when the human member of the Horde held his ground, standing unarmed as he waited for them to approach. Spittle sprayed from their mouths as they both let loose with their intimidating shouts, too enraged by his war dance to realize that he was anything but intimidated by them. Collision was imminent as they approached within a few yards of him on either side; victory seemed assured.

At the very last second, Gutripper squatted down and _jumped_ straight up into the air, finally letting out his own intimidating shout as he did. Completely distracted, the two drogbar stumbled and lost their footing as they watching what appeared to be a speeding cannonball into the and then the empty space in front of them. Unable to stop their own momentum, the two of them crashed right into each other, grunting in pain so deeply that the core of the planet itself was probably roused from its sleep.

Gutripper unsheathed his sword in midair and dropped right down onto the back of one of his opponents, plunging the blade as deep as possible into the drogbar's humpback. The blade stabbed down until the hilt, skewering the earth mover without actually killing him, but because of his knuckle-walking gait he remained almost standing. While still standing on the man's back, Gutripper stomped on the forehead of the other dazed drogbar as hard as he could; his boot banged against the rocky head and almost knocked the drogbar down and most certainly got its attention.

Without any forethought, the second drogbar swung upwards and tried to hit Gutripper. Yanking back on the hilt of his sword, the Horde human forced the first drogbar's head up, placing it right in the path of the second one's fist. The shot was wild but considering that the first rocky fighter had already been stabbed all thebway down his back with a sword, the punch was enough to put it down for good.

By lifting his feet off the surface of the casualty at the last second, Gutripper wasn't flung back the way his first victim's body was, and easily brought his axe down onto the second drogbar's fist as he dropped to the ground. Most of the monstrous humanoid's fingers on that hand were severed, and his half-second instinct to cradle his mangle hand gave Gutripper the extra half a second he needed to amputate the other hand. Rearing back in pain, the second drogbar was easy to shove to the ground, and Gutripper prepared to repeat the same interrogation procedure he had with the Feltotem.

"Where's the doll?" he yelled in Taurahe as he banged the flat end of his war axe against the drogbar's temple.

"I don't understand!" the downed man replied in the language. He sounded as much of a novice as Gutripper did, and the conversation wasn't likely to get very far.

"You robbed a group of Feltotem who robbed a family of Highmountain! Where is the loot!"

"A bunch of vrykul robbed it from us!"

"Where!"

"That way!" the drogbar said eagerly as it pointed further up the foothills.

One swift decapitation later and Gutripper was sprinting away again, occasionally dodging as the tall pine trees became more numerous. Murder was on his mind as his patience wore thin. As determined as he was to fulfill his promise to the tauren child, he did wonder whether the experience of slaughtering enemies of the civilized world was preferable to the efficiency had the first group of enemies still had the doll in their possession.

In between the trees, he began to see a trail of blood on the grass and roots, and a cacophony of shouts and hisses up ahead. The familiar tongue of the vile naga reached his ears, and he wondered just how long the chain of miscreants robbing each other would last. A vrykul corpse on the ground indicated that said chain might be quite long.

In a clearing on extremely uneven terrain, he found a few more vrykul corpses alongside a single rune carver nursing a wound unseen beneath his dark robes. His weapons still sheathed, Gutripper grabbed a spear from one of the fallen vrykul, knowing that their people were hostile to almost all other peoples; there was little reason to assume that the ashen sorcerer before him would be any less hostile than the drogbar.

Surprise filled the rune carver's eyes, but the half-giant didn't hesitate in beginning one of his foul magics. A dark green glow emanated from the man's hands, complemented by the continuous flow of blood once he stopped applying pressure to his wound. Never enjoying encounters with cloth wearers, Gutripper hurled the spear at the vrykul's casting hands, impaling them both with a perfectly aimed shot and interrupting the spell. This time, Gutripper closed the gap before his opponent could even scream, and he swung low and dragged his sword across his opponent's waist. The dark robes were sliced alongside the vrykul's stomach, causing its guts to be ripped right out of its body.

"Where's the doll!" Gutripper yelled as the vrykul collapsed.

A shaking finger pointed up to a point where the foothills evened out. More blood dotted the landscape, punctuated by the corpses of both vrykul and naga. Why the serpent people were so far fromma water source was strange, but none of Gutripper's concern; a little girl needed her doll back.

Leaving the rune carver to bleed out, Gutripper sprinted further into the foothills of the mountain range, quickly gaining on a group of three wounded naga. They were all as battered as the other enemies he'd encountered, but appeared rather jovial and self assured; hopefully, he thought, that meant they were the last in the chain of bad guys.

They noticed his approach, the smiles disappearing from their reptilian faces as exhaustion marked their snake eyes. They were two warriors and a caster, but the warriors looked hurt enough such that they wouldn't be as much of a threat as he'd expected. Naga were nasty creatures, and fighting them was an ordeal; even if you won, you'd come out with all sorts of nasty cuts and infections.

The caster held her hands out as if to reason with him. "Wait, mortal! You have no idea what just happened!" she said in fluent Orcish, making no move to cast.

Gutripper was no stranger to the dishonesty of the snake people, and made no haste in rushing the first warrior. It raised its trident threateningly, attempting to hold him at bay as its counterpart prepared a net. The tactic was standard naga techniques, and he knew just the counter to avoid it. Crossing his weapons in front of him, he locked blades with the naga warrior and began to strafe away from the second one. As the net came down, Gutripper leapt backward, leaving the trident to become entangled in the net. Hooking the net with his axe, he yanked back and stole the first naga's weapon, swiftly kicking the trident away. By the time the female had cast her frost bolt, he'd already run behind her protectors, causing them to be hit by the spell. Their frost resistance prevented them from being stuck in place, but the distraction allowed him to split the first warrior down the middle with his sword.

"Wait! Just listen!" the famed growled angrily, though the fact that she continued to cast another frost bolt told him all he needed to know.

He had to stop her before she had the chance to blast him. Giving the second warrior a wide berth - they were dangerous even when unarmed - he forced the sea witch to delay her own casting time by backing away from him. She couldn't slither away quickly enough, and he cut her down at the same time that he saw a golden, magical hammer slam into the head of the last naga warrior, granting him the time to perform his second decapitation of the day.

"Indeed thy knave is nigh fortnight foreboding Faire forsooth!"

At first the foreign words from behind him didn't entirely register; Gutripper had been so focused on completing his quest that his situational awareness lost its usual acuteness. The familiarity of the stuffy, inflexible way of speaking broke that focus, however, and pulled him out of his tunnel vision as he turned away from the naga corpses.

Following his tracks were two humans riding in horses, one of them leading a third blonde horse by the reins. Their Alliance tabards and golden armor already informed him of who they were before the male, a rather youngish fellow, had the audacity to address him in botched Orcish.

"You killed our commander, you race traitor," the feeble Alliance member said. "Prepare to die."

Almost on cue, an enormous, booming voice loomed just out of the view of all three of them, further up the foothills. How a being that was three stories tall could have been stalking them in the trees and then snuck up so soundlessly was beyond Gutripper.

"You took the words out of my mouth," erupted the voice of an ettin with several drogbar and a Feltotem tauren strapped to his baldric like living loot.


	3. Giantstomping

There was no standoff. There was no staredown. There was no ominous pause as the three humans - two members of the Alliance and one of the Horde - tried to think of a strategy. The ettin, an ancient man big enough to topple a house, was an enemy of all of them.

"You belong to me now!" the ettin boomed as it bent over his great stature and tried to snatch Gutripper up. It had long, narrow hands that nearly blotted out the sun as they dug into the dirt, unstoppable but also unwieldy.

Gutripper summersaulted forward, running in between the ettin's legs and forcing it to twist around to see him. He'd taken down sea giants before, but they were often obese and even less mobile than the two-headed mountain giants that stalked the forests of Azeroth. Faced with a much more imposing foe, he had to think fast. The two soldiers who'd followed him appeared to have been pledged to the unhelpful paladin whose horse he'd borrowed; from what he knew from the Sindorei blood knights in the Horde, they wouldn't retreat until they felt they'd exacted their revenge, which was exactly what he was counting on. He'd need his opponents to fall against each other before he struck.

After running a few circles around the amused ettin, Gutripper had put enough distance between them to make a break for the betraying blonde horse. The mount screeched in fear, probably in remembrance of when he'd used it as a springboard to attack the Feltotem, and reared up enough to jolt the male squire from his saddle.

"Poppycock preposterous pompadour proceedings!" the male paladin-in-training yelped in Common, or at least something that sounded like that.

The female paladin, possibly assuming that Gutripper was trying to flee, rode in front of him as a sort of blockade. "You no go! You no nice!" she said in broken Orcish. As idiotic as her speech sounded, her warhammer was imposing enough to make her threat clear and her greater experience obvious.

Unfortunately for her, flight wasn't Gutripper's actual response, and his spur-of-the-moment plan executed itself excellently. "Delicious!" the ettin boomed in Taurahe, possibly the only language the creature knew, as it reached down and grabbed the woman's horse by the head.

The mount screamed into the palm of the ettin's hand as it was lifted off the ground with minimal effort. The female soldier tried to dismount quickly, but her boot became stuck in the horse's stirrups for a second and she was dragged up with her mount. Like clockwork, the two bearers of the blue and gold tabard turned their aggression to the bigger source of threat.

"Nay, nary netherwinds!" the male squire shouted valiantly in his ridiculous sounding register as he dismounted and pulled out a shield and a cudgel. The blond horse immediately fled, already spooked from the sight of Gutripper again.

By chance, the female's boot became dislodged from the stirrups, causing her to plummet to the ground. The drop wasn't too high and she was well armored, but her landing was awkward and she fell back down when she tried to stand up. One of the ettin's heads bit off her horse's entire head and neck, chewing on it like a big piece of candy.

"What a wonderful day," the ettin's other head chuckled to itself, completely unaware of the male squire charging toward it.

The Alliance man raised his cudgel. "Hottentot herald harbinger!" he exclaimed, swinging his blunt weapon pretty hard against the ettin's shin. Despite the mountain giant's size, the force of the blow against bone caused an audible cracking sound.

" **Yyyeeeaaaaarrrggghhh**!" it bellowed, causing all the birds in all the trees in a two mile radius to burst frantically into the sky. The head that had been eating a head (of a horse) started to choke, and the ettin grasped that throat with one of its hands.

A big welt formed on its shin where the blood vessels had been broken. Though the wound was by no means debilitating, it looked so painful that Gutripper flinched even as he unsheathed his weapons. Not to be felled by a simple welt, the ettin swiftly pulled one of the drogbar from its baldric and hurled it right at the male squire like a living projectile. Whether due to futility or stupidity, the man raised his shield and took up a defensive stance just prior to the impact.

"Uuuuurrrrrrrhhhhh," both the human and the drogbar groaned as they collided with a loud smack. The shield was mangled and the two bodies skipped across the ground like a smooth stone thrown onto the surface of a lake, then laid motionless after kicking up large amounts of dirt.

Not to be outdone, Gutripper flung himself at the ettin's other leg, hacking at the shin with his axe like a Warsong lumberjack. A second swipe with his sword cut into the meat of the ettin's calf, finally spilling copious amounts of blood. This time, the giant stumbled, grabbing onto a nearby pine tree to balance itself as it released a cacophony of roars from its two mouths. The head that had been eating the horse sprayed horse blood everywhere as it yelled, like a sort of grim fertilizer that a Forsaken dreadguard might use on their lawn.

Grabbing the captured Feltotem tauren from its baldric, the ettin turned and found Gutripper continuing to run circles around it below. By holding the tauren by the hooves, the ettin wielded an effective weapon with two horns as points, sort of like a furry pickaxe. The tauren screamed for help to nobody in particular as the ettin beat it against the bushes, a few trees and even the ground in an attempt to smash Gutripper. Holes and hatch marks were cut into the soil and even a boulder, and it was all the Horde human could do to avoid being killed with the body of someone else who was slowly being killed. On a few occasions, Gutripper had to dive and slide on the ground, the living weapon grazing his grunt's armor and whizzing by his head dangerously close. In time, the tauren was battered so severely that it laid too limply in the ettin's hand to remain an effective weapon, garnering an angry roar from the monstrous giantkin.

"Stop moving!" it yelled while stomping on the horse of the late male squire. The equine was broken in half, and Gutripper didn't even have time to wonder why it didn't just run away as he sought an opening.

The ettin's leg was bleeding profusely, and the giant began to breathe heavily as it limped after him. Gutripper had barely broken out into a sweat even after chasing down two groups of opponents. In theory, he could continue to kite the ettin until it collapsed, but that was assuming that it didn't step on him before then; even a single successful blow would be the end of him.

The attention of both of them was drawn by the female paladin, who let loose with some sort of a battlecry that was completely incomprehensible. Warhammer at the ready, she charged toward both of them like a madwoman, reaching them both before the ettin had enough time to react. With a rather impressive heft, she brought her warhammer down onto the ettin's ankle, banging it so hard that it almost certainly broke.

"I KILL YOU NOW," the ettin yelled as it fell to one knee. At the same time, it reached forward as it fell so its hand would squash the Alliance woman like a bug.

"Divine shield!" she yelled right back, and those two words were wines that Gutripper was very familiar with despite his not knowing Common. Few members of the Alliance were as annoying to kill as paladins, whether they were fully fledged or trainees.

A golden bubble appeared around the woman at the very last second, protecting her as the giant hand hovered just over her head. Unfamiliar with the tricks of paladins, the ettin rested all of its wounded wait on top of the divine shield, trying to simply burst it like a bubble. Although the woman tensed up and groaned in pain as she maintained the bubble, the shield didn't give way.

Not wanting to give the giant a chance to get up, Gutripper struck. Both of the ettin's hamstrings were severed by his weapons, causing its legs to flail and knock him to the side. Down and out, the ettin was unable to escape when the female squire cracked one of its heads open with her warhammer. Strangely, her execution of the right head caused the ettin's left arm and leg to go limp, crippling it in an awkward way. Granting a temporary respect to a member of a nation he detested, Gutripper caught his breath as she executed the other head, ending the greater threat. Still frantic as she searched for her dead companion, she didn't seem to notice that her divine shield flickered out, lasting far less than that of fully-trained paladin would have.

In her process of spinning around, her eyes fell to Gutripper, standing across from her and offensive in his stance. A combination of both anxiety and anger mixed in her eyes, and she tried to steel her features as she hefted her warhammer. "Divine shield!" she repeated, but her protective spell flickered in and out only a single time before it fizzled out.

"Cooldowns are a killer," he said as he charged right for her.

She raised her warhammer in a preemptive strike, but her heavy weapon was too slow and her aim too unrefined to stop him. He parried her strike and brought his axe down onto her arm; although the blow didn't quite penetrate her armor, the force most certainly damaged her arm, and her weapon fell from her hands. With a strength equal to that of any orc by birth, the Horde human dropped his axe, grabbed her by the shoulder, brought his sword upward and forced the blade through her breastplate and, ultimately, her lungs.

"By the power," she groaned, coughing up blood as she started to cast a healing spell on herself. Gutripper jiggled his sword in the wound, interrupting her spellcast and causing her to fall limp on his sword.

Sliding her corpse off of his blade, Gutripper finally panted, feeling the burn as he searched for any more enemies standing in his way. Aside from the last surviving horse which was fleeing over the horizon, he saw no other living thing in the immediate vicinity. He did, however, hear one.

"It's here, just take it," came the voice of a drogbar from beneath the ettin's corpse. "I don't even want the doll, we just thought the Feltotem might have gold."

Upon inspection, Gutripper found one more drogbar crushed under the ettin's stomach and tied to its baldric; a fine mountain ram was tied to the ettin's back, and Gutripper made haste in untying the animal as a potential mount.

The drogbar's head and one arm were poking out from under the ettin's corpse, and it began fishing around in the grass without even needing to be interrogated. Gutripper tapped his boot on the ground impatiently as he waited. "Here, take the doll, just don't kill me," the drogbar said while offering a little tauren plushy to the triumphant Horde grunt.

Although he'd finally found the doll without resistance, Gutripper cringed at the drogbar's begging for its life. "Have some self respect," he said as he cut the ettin's baldric. Though he wouldn't leave the last drogbar to die since it cooperated, it would have to crawl out from under the enormous carcass itself if it couldn't muster the courage to face its fate.

His quest nearly finished, Gutripper mounted the ram, finding it rather accepting of being ridden. "To the south, temporary mount; a little girl needs this doll!" He raised his sword to the sky and pointed back to where he'd come from, leading the ram to the family he'd found by the side of the mountain path.


	4. Promisekeeping

Less than ten minutes later, the swift ram had returned Gutripper to the vicinity of where he'd attacked the first group of Feltotem ruffians. Traveling with a mount was always more enjoyable even if it made him feel lazy, and he felt he'd earned the right to relax after all the bad guy blood he'd spilled that day. The Highmountain child and her aunt must have felt safe enough to venture forward, because they'd already reached the thicket of trees with their camping gear by the time he found them.

"Auntie, he's here, the man is here!" the child exclaimed just a little too loudly for an areawith wild animals roaming. The mature tauren tried to calm her, but the woman's eyes widened as soon as she saw Gutripper riding toward them.

"Oh my," she said as she gazed at the victorious grunt riding toward them. Gutripper's armor and skin were stained with red blood (he'd wiped the fel-tainted blood off due to paranoia about demonic corruption) but he was otherwise unmarked by the entire ordeal.

Once he reached the horned pair, he dismounted and unfurled a handkerchief he'd borrowed from one of the dead Alliance members to keep the doll clean. The girl reached out her tiny hands, bouncing up and down but still waiting politely until he offered it to her.

"You got my plushy back!" she cooed while hugging the doll, which was almost her own size.

Placing his fist over his heart one more time, Gutripper bowed to the little tauren girl and her aunt. "The conflicts of the world outside the Broken Isles might seem foreign to you, but it's my hope that your elders will soon agree to join us," he said, more to the aunt than to the child who was now enraptured by her toy and no longer listening to him.

"And this is for you," he said while handing the reins of the ram to the aunt.

Her eyes widened again, and his words took a few seconds to fully dawn in her mind. "Oh, no,I couldn't - how will you-"

"I insist." He took her hand in his, and although she was taller than him, she let out a surprised little noise from her nose at the firmness of his grip. He even took her camping gear from her and loaded it into the ram's saddlebags. She nearly gasped when, upon reaching for his hand for assistance in mounting, he held her by the waist and actually lifted her up to the saddle. The child squealed when he put her on her aunt's lap, but otherwise had moved on from the conversation.

She continued to gaze at him for a long time, unable to look away even as the ram began to walk. "Thank you...thank you so much," she said, a measure of regret in her voice when he didn't follow.

"May the winds guide you," he said while watching them ride away. Perhaps he should have gone, but it wouldn't be the first time that duty forced him to bid farewell to a stranger only minutes after helping them. The life of a Horde officer never left one without quest logs to complete.

When he was sure they were a safe distance from a nearby mountain path marked by totems and a courtesy road map, he turned back south and began his trek back to Thunder Totem. His patrol quest was also complete, he had the death of a neutral noob mercenary to report, and based on his experience in the Isles for the past month, there was a good chance that there were more people in need waiting for the herald of the red and black flag.


End file.
